Do You Burn More Calories When You Are Sick?

There’s nothing fun about being sick. Whether you’ve got the flu or a stomach cold – it just plain sucks.But, do you burn more calories when you are sick? If it’s true, at least there’s a positive side to feeling miserable.

The anecdotal evidence suggests that you do burn more calories when you are sick because people tend to drop weight, but that could be from lack of eating.

Let’s look at the science behind being sick.
Your body does burn more calories if you are sick – depending on what type of sickness you have. If you have a fever then you are going to burn a lot more calories – as much as 50% more – because your body is frantically using energy to try and fight off the fever. You see, calories are nothing more than units of energy. The more energy you burn the more calories you burn. Once you understand this, it just makes sense that you would burn more calories by being sick because your body is using energy to fight it.

Of course it’s somewhat of a wash because when you’re sick you are usually just lying around in bed all day doing nothing. On a normal day you’re probably out and about, so the calorie burn may not be much more. If you want to burn even more calories while sick drink plenty of cold water.